to smile without regret
by Tenkasen
Summary: The first time Jack sees Yusei after their Definitely Not Huge Fight, that happened right before the start of their last year of junior high, it's at the entrance gate to U.A. - the top high school of choice for anyone wanting to be a pro hero in their world full of Quirks, people born with unusual talents and powers. [My Hero Academia AU]


a/n: Birthday gift for Yugirl-with-dragons! Happy birthday to my favourite AU (and all around amazing) artist!

* * *

 **Part One: The Past That Follows You**

* * *

The first time Jack sees Yusei after their Definitely Not Huge Fight, that happened right before the start of their last year of junior high, it's at the entrance gate to U.A.

He looks different. There are gold streaks in his hair and Yusei's never been one to care much for his appearance — one look at the wild mess that sits on his head could tell anyone that — but there's a change in his style, his clothes are a little less 'whatever was around' and a little more 'these items appear vaguely aesthetically pleasing together', and his hair does actually look like it had a recent encounter with a brush. Like he's taken an interest more in the things around him, in how other's see him, in things that weren't just his stupid machines or his bike.

They make eye contact at the threshold — Yusei is stopping to stare at some boy with blue hair that managed to trip over a brown and chubby cat that must've wandered in — and Jack pointedly brushes past him, turning to look back at his former friend. Yusei holds his glare, refusing to speak, but he's still the first to break and look elsewhere.

Jack scoffs.

Yusei never really changes.

* * *

If he's honest, he's surprised to see Crow at the exams, but not overly so. He knows this is what Crow's always wanted, the admiration and the thrill of being a hero, he just never thought he'd be willing to actually apply himself to something like the toughest high school in the country. He'd also have to give up his pickpocketing hobby if he really wanted to be a hero, and Crow was stubborn in all the dumbest of ways.

But Crow is loyal and compassionate, had a strong quirk, and his motivation is always those brats at the orphanage. Crow would probably swallow glass for them if he had to, and, well, that kind of devotion was at least, something a hero could have and not worry about it becoming a weakness as long as they were was fine. Crow isn't really competition anyway, he just wants to earn money and keep the kids safe. Jack didn't worry about Crow.

The real question is why Yusei is here.

 _(Yusei with a wrench in his hand and a pencil shoved in his hair. Yusei passed out on top a sheet of blueprints for a motorcycle engine. Yusei and his face streaked with grease and arms elbow deep in the innards of a massive pile of junk. Yusei, wide eyed, being gifted with a new computer chip, looking like he'd just been given the world on a platter.)_

 _(Yusei, scrawny and cold, turning the old, outdated chip over and over in his hands like maybe if he thought about it hard enough, he could find a way to bring the dead back to life.)_

Yusei, in every image Jack could dredge up without setting off a minefield of old grudges, had one thing in common.

Yusei and machines went hand in hand. Yusei was practically glued to technology, and had actually once glued his hand to something he had been making. He lived for taking stuff apart and putting them back together, that's all his head was good for. When they had been a team, a lifetime ago as far as Jack was concerned, it was clear that Yusei had the simplistic life goal about helping people with the things he scavenged and built.

Yusei was always meant for the Support area of heroics.

Not the main Hero course.

His quirk wasn't even that good.

And yet there he was, a couple rows down, staring ahead as Sho "The Cyber Dragon" Marufuji explained how the exam would go. Yusei is sitting there like nothing had happened since they all parted, like Yusei belonged here. Like Yusei had a chance.

Yusei never gives up anything to further himself, and yet every time somehow ends up with a goal identical to Jack wants. With some nonsensical roundabout thinking and absurd luck, Yusei always ends up trying to take what Jack has sacrificed for, and he does it without even realizing it. Yusei won't win this time, can't win with a quirk that couldn't even put out a mildly distressing fire, but the fact that he even has the gall to try...

It pisses Jack off.

* * *

Aki Izayoi hates the cold.

Apart from the obvious reasons why the cold bothered her like how it tended bother most humans, the chief reason was her plants didn't like it. Weren't resistant to the cold, like they were to everything else. Her vines withered and her thorns dulled, and no matter how much she willed them they were slow to grow in the winter. Her quirk is wild and unyielding in the best of times, and admittedly most types of fauna didn't thrive in ice and snow but hers couldn't stand even the slightest touch. She hates the weakness, hates the cold for making her weak, and hates her quirk too for good measure but it's all she has left. Mama and Papa whisper to each other when she's in the house, like they're afraid she will hear them. Her parents pushed her to apply to U.A, to become a hero, but Aki knows why they wanted her to follow her foolish childhood dream, why they almost begged her to go.

They don't want her.

They don't like her.

They fear her.

Aki can read the words on their lips, the words they don't say out loud, and she knows that they want her to go to U.A. not because they think she can be a hero — they just don't want her to be a villain, a monster.

It's a cold morning when they send her off to the U.A. exam. They offer to drive her, but Aki blows them off, chilly as the air around them, because she can walk, she doesn't need them to create a spectacle by taking her in a limo. They don't push the topic, loiter by the front step like they want to say something. Aki waits, but in the end they just wish her luck and turn away. Aki tries not to be disappointed.

(She is anyway.)

So Aki walks to the gates of the prestigious U.A with a thick jacket, a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, and her bag slung over her shoulder. The exam is two parts — a written test, and then a practical, and it was advised to bring flexible and durable clothes for the second part.

She sees many of her former classmates, who turn a whisper as she briskly walks by. Aki pretends she cannot hear them, pretends she does not know what they say, even though she's heard it a thousand times before. Aki also passes by some blue haired boy who tripped over a cat (doesn't he know it's bad luck to trip before a test?) and a different dark haired boy who's stopped to try and help him up. It's an odd sight, but she ignores that too, pressing forward. Concentration is key and Aki fully intends to ace this test, in spite of her parents fears.

Aki grips her forearms tight, nails digging into flesh, and seethes.

She's not a monster.

She'll prove it today.

* * *

The exam is a fight against giant robots.

The rules?

Destroy or incapacitate. Get points depending on the numbers written on the robots. Avoid the huge one worth zero points. Earn as many points you can.

It's too easy.

Aki's vines tear through concrete and metal, ripping the robot combat drones to pieces. Her plants stream out from the ground beneath her feet, her quirk growing and controlling them, directing their massive thorny vines to scratch across metal plates and lash out with the force of a speeding car.

Someone screams, and Aki spares a glance — a boy, another test taker, almost got hit by some of the debris from her attacks, a near victim of the sheer reckless force that is her quirk, and was knocked back onto the ground.

(She should apologize.)

The boy scrambles to his feet, and her vines almost instinctively lash out at him. Aki tries to reign them in, because there's not point in hurting them — she wants them to stop looking at her like that — and her vines miss by a wide margin, but the boy saw it coming for him all the same.

(She doesn't want to hurt them.)

That look of fear in their eyes is familiar.

(She should say something, anything, to make them feel less afraid.)

He runs away from her.

Aki turns her attention back to the robots. Those, she can hurt and not feel — bad, good, anything — and that's the whole point. Her — stupid, wretched — quirk was ideal for this kind of situation, of this kind of battle, of this kind of environment; a fake city, built to scale, probably next to nothing in budget costs considering the funding UA got.

There were so many students at the opening presentation and written exam — for all of them to be able to take part in an arena free for all battle, there must be several places like this for students to fight in. If UA had access to that, then the school itself must be top notch.

It's the school that the number one hero, Neos, graduated from. If she could attend… If she can graduate from it…

That would prove it, wouldn't it?

To her parents? To the world?

(To herself?)

She's not a villain.

She's not a monster.

Aki doesn't want to be any of that. She — she wants to fight, she doesn't want to enjoy seeing the fear on people's faces when her quirk runs free without control, she wants to be a —

Her plants are dying.

Aki sees her breath in the air the flows out of her mouth when she gasps, because her vines start to wither and die, despite the sun shining down on them, despite the warm afternoon glow of the day — because suddenly, everything has gone white. A glittering, blue-ish white.

And when Aki turns around, she's met with a boy with blue eyes and black hair streaked with gold.

* * *

Against all odds, Crow runs into Yusei on the morning of his first day at UA.

At first, Crow stops and squints, and rubs at his eyes because he hasn't seen Yusei in forever, not since Yusei just one slung a bag over his shoulder, walked out the door of Martha's house, and never came back. He blinks a couple of times for good measure, because there's not a spot of grease anywhere on Yusei's jacket and there's some new gold streaks of color in his hair but — that's Yusei: black hair, blue eyes, and a pensive look on his grease smudged face. Crow could never mistake that face.

There are so many things Crow immediately wants to do, wants to say, because Crow's mad, he's fucking pissed because Yusei went and disappeared for nearly an entire year with maybe a stray "I'm okay" text every few weeks to keep Crow from calling in a search party, but above all Yusei is right here and Crow is going to motherfucking tackle hug him to the ground.

So he does.

Yusei gets a good five second warning before the both of them collide and make one very obnoxious pile on the ground, a tangle of limbs that people had to walk around. A stepping hazard at the foot of the entrance gate, people stare at the two idiots on the ground.

The action altogether is very annoying and usually bugs the shit out of Jack or makes — made, Kiryu laugh, and it's always made Yusei smile, soft and shy like the giant softie he was under that 'Too Cool to Experience Emotions' exterior (heh).

"You asshole," Crow says, grinning from ear to ear. "Where the fuck have you been?"

"Crow?" Yusei wheezes, struggling to get in air with a sudden influx of weight bearing down on his lungs.

"Who else? It's me, Crow "The Bullet" in the flesh."

This is when, Crow, having fallen on top of Yusei in their elegant pile, notices something very important.

"Holy shit," Crow whispers, "You've actually been eating."

"Most people do," Yusei says.

"No, like," Crow pokes at Yusei's stomach, and can actually feel abs. "You've been eating. Regular meals. Nutritious foods. Protein. Eating healthy and exercising."

"Oh," Yusei pushes Crow off him so he can sit up. Crow is too busy having tears well up in his eyes to care. "Yeah, I suppose so."

"Yuuuusei," Crow cries, and tackles Yusei again to cry manly tears all over his nice grey school jacket. Magnanimously, Yusei allows this, awkwardly patting Crow on the back. "You've finally started taking care of yourself, this is, this is beautiful, this is fucking great."

"Sorry," Yusei says, his face downcast. "I know I worried you back when… last year. It shouldn't have fallen to you to look after me. I should have taken care of myself better."

"I don't even care because seriously, look at you," Crow stands up, dragging Yusei with him. Crow lightly punches him in the shoulder and feels the pure muscle that hadn't been there when Crow last saw Yusei, withering away right before his eyes. "You have muscle. You look healthy. You... I'm really glad you're alive."

And this embarrasses Yusei, which Crow cackles to, because being painfully genuine is easier than breathing for Yusei, but when he's on the receiving end his face hits a shade that would rival a tomato.

"So, where have you been? What's been going on? Where you headed?" Crow asks, because man, would he love to ditch class to follow around Yusei and find out what he does with his mysterious, secretive new life, but well, top school in the country and all that. Ditching on the first day seems like a very bad idea.

Yusei frowns, then pointedly stares at the emblem on Crow's jacket, and then back to the one on his.

They're identical.

"No way," Crow says, frowns, blinks, and then flips out. "You're going to UA too?"

"Yeah," Yusei says. "Hero course, class 1-A."

"Class — we're in the same class. This. This is amazing," Crow says, punching Yusei in the shoulder again, and then mentally backtracks. "Wait, Hero course?"

"Yeah," Yusei says, looking away. "I applied for the Support course as a backup, but I took the exam for the Hero course as well."

"How did you —" pass, Crow does not say, because Crow has tact, but Yusei hears that bit anyway, Crow can tell by the way Yusei's shoulders tense up. The exams were tough, even for Crow the Bullet, and Crow had a quirk that could used for combat. Yusei… Yusei's quirk was practical, but it was not a quirk for battle. Maybe he got a lot of those rescue point things? "How did you decide you wanted in on the Hero course? You never really did much quirk fighting when we — uh, you never really showed interest."

"I made a promise," Yusei says, and cryptic should be his middle name, because that's all he says. Crow tries to stare him down for answers, but Yusei is the master of staring contests and Crow blinks first. Damnit.

"Fine," Crow huffs, "I'll find out later what you did to pass, because it was probably really cool. Get it? Cool?"

At least Yusei sighs at that.

* * *

They share class with Jack too, which as it turns out, not as kickass as Crow would have thought.

It honestly isn't surprising that Jack passed the exam (they had to fight giant robots, honestly, the size of them rivaled Jack's ego but not his strength), and with the acceptance rate barely enough for two classes, the chances that they'd all get stuffed in 1-A isn't all that unlikely.

What is surprising is that he and Yusei are still holding those mysterious (but probably stupid) grudges against each other. The moment Yusei and Crow walk in, they see Jack and Jack sees them, and his face twists up like he'd just swallowed something disgusting. Yusei, in return, pretends like he never saw him, his face frozen in something fake-neutral, and veers to the left and settles into a seat in front of a red-head girl who glares daggers at him. This seat is, naturally, on the opposite side of the room from Jack.

"Why did I even expect anything different?" Crow mutters, dragging a hand across his face. He cried tears over Yusei, okay, but those were like, I'm glad you're not dead tears more than anything and this doesn't actually mean he wants to act like a parent for his two foster brothers and whatever squabble has them blatantly ignoring each other even after an entire year of radio silence.

An enormously great start to the year.

Then, someone kicks down their door.

Immediately, Crow drops down into an empty seat nearest the door. He had almost forgotten, in his excitement about all of them being in the same class together and Yusei's weird new life after the Kiryu Incident, how much he's interested in knowing what teacher they have for homeroom. UA, the best school in the nation for training heroes, boasted a faculty made up of famous and top tier pro heroes.

And their homeroom teacher is…

A guy in a black jacket that reeked of soy sauce.

"Good morning, slackers," The man says, strolling in to stand behind the front desk. His black hair sticks up like it just had a fight with a brush and lost, and there's some shiny bits of armor stuck to his shoulders. "I'm your homeroom teacher. Jun Manjome 'Thunder'."

"Manjome-who?" Someone in the class whispers. Except, problem is, the only other sound in the room was the chirping of crickets, so it might as well have been spoken at regular volume.

"Like, Manjome the politician guy?" A student one asks, scratching the back of their head. "Or the famous one that works on wall street? ...Our pro hero teacher is a financial advisor...?"

"What?" Their teacher slams his hands down on his desk. "No! No those — those are my brothers, ignore them, they aren't important — Manjome Thunder? Seriously? None of you recognize me?"

An entire minute of silence follow his words.

"I'm failing this entire class," Manjome says. "All of you. Goddamnit. It's day one and you don't know me. Seriously? I know I'm not 'Symbol of Peace' number one hero Neos but I'm a pro hero dammit. I was there during the Society of Light riots!"

Something about this tidbit of information gets Crow's brain going, because Society of Light is a thing he remembers watching on TV when he was in elementary school, still learning how to read and write, easily distracted by bright colors and — oh.

"Ojama-man!" Crow bursts out, pointing a finger at his teacher and drawing the attention of the class. "You worked with Cyber Angel to infiltrate the weird light cult thing! It was on the news! And you were dressed as some fake hero called Ojama-man!"

A suddenly it's like Crow is the crack in the dam — everyone else's memories begin to pour through, with shouts of recognition and ooh the weird yellow suit guy. Even Yusei is nodding along, and he pays as much attention to heroes on TV as a mouse does astrophysics.

"Why is that the only thing you remember?" Their newly remembered teacher shrieks. "Okay, that's it. Everyone out, get changed and meet me outside by the training grounds, hurry up, let's go."

* * *

Jun was regretting every single life decision he ever made. Like the time he agreed to spar with Judai after his weird "trip to space" or whatever the hell that meant, because if he had probably gone on and lived his normal school life without dealing with the red slacker, he probably would've stuck with the pro hero gig and not taken up a post at UA along with Asuka. The working with Asuka thing was actually kind of a really great thing that Jun was super happy about, but the point still stands, because teaching is annoying.

This class of new, fresh faced wanna be heroes in training was really no exception.

Orange Broomstick Head was the only one who remembered him, but for like, a really dumb idea that was all Judai's fault. So he's on his shit list.

Once the entire class has changed into their gym clothes and assembled by the edges of the training grounds, Jun begins.

"Alright, basically, this is a competition," Jun says, hands on his waist, staring down a bunch of uneasy teenagers. "Fitness tests and all that boring business, but with a twist: you get to use your quirks, because in the hero business, you're going to be relying on them heavily and need be used to using them in any and all circumstances."

There is a general murmur of agreement, some kids are plain excited to be using their quirks with reckless abandon and freedom. Jun is, as it usually happens during this first exercise, having vivid flashbacks to his first year and Judai, who immediately starting shouting and jumping with excitement when faced with a similar test. Judai also _somehow_ managed to smack Jun in the face with his flailing, leading to a four year long rivalry that Jun can't say he regrets.

But he's still pissed at Judai for being a general idiot.

How that bumbling slacker ended up the number one hero in the world is beyond him. And on top of that, Judai's recent weird, bizarre life choices make Jun rub his head in irritation. Apparently logic is something that didn't even bother to even look in Judai's direction.

"But before you get carried away," Jun says, cutting off the chattering of the students. "Know this: the student who ends up in last place gets expelled."

The shocked silence that follows is almost immediately broken by the voice of Jun's currently least favorite student.

"What?" Orange Broomstick Head says. "Expelled? That's not fair! We worked so hard to get in here!"

"Then you better work hard to make sure you stay in here," Jun retorts, and then doesn't give them anymore time to complain. "Because if you end up in last place, then that means you've got pretty much no potential. Line up over there, we're doing a fifty-meter dash first. Get moving slackers!"

Apparently, Orange Broomstick Head can run his legs as fast as he runs his mouth, because even without his quirk the kid is fast (somehow while grumbling during the entire run). But that's a little irrelevant when the whole point is quirks and physical abilities combined, so Jun mostly ignores it.

The tests run them all through a gamut of physical activities - running, strength test, endurance, side to side jumping, throwing distance, and Jun's personal favorite, a final race to the top. Over the course of a couple of the tests, Jun notes a couple notable seeming students.

Orange Broomstick Head — Crow Hogan, apparently, who must've been named in anticipation for how annoying he'd be, much like the bird. Quirk: Black Feather. A chatterbox of a student, cocky, but not mean spirited, he's scoring well on the tests, using sneaky ways of working his quirk in to inch ahead of the rest of the class on the scoreboard. Not exactly a powerhouse, but he's got finesse.

Angry Red Head — Aki Izayoi, girl who looks like she'd kill a man for a bagel or for looking at her strange. Quirk: Black Rose Thorn. Kind of a silent type girl who alternatively glares at everyone and then makes everything she does look effortless, albeit very reckless too. Doesn't look like she really knows how to make friends, or even acquaintances. Power wise though, she's way ahead, nearly pushing her way to the top with ease.

Scowly Tall Blonde — Jack Atlas, current class champion for being 'that guy' in terms of lack of friendliness, and an overabundance of smugness. Quirk: Red Daemon's Fire. (Who was letting all these edgy teens name their quirks?) Currently king of the scoreboard, his quirk was powerful, versatile, and pretty much under control. Much like Aki, Jack likes to do that thing where he stands away from the rest of the group, but unlike Aki, it seems like he does it on purpose to look cool or because he really doesn't like people, arms crossed, and plainly uninterested in the performances of his peers, except for —

Probably Your Local Mechanic — Yusei Fudo, a boy who looks like he rolled out from underneath a car and then promptly fell off a cliff, dirty and grease stained like the smudges are a permanent fixture on his skin. Quirk: ? Whatever it was called (the kid had left the name of his quirk blank on the application, which was weird, but for some reason the principal let it slide), Yusei wasn't using it, trying to think his way through the challenges it seems instead. Good in theory, not so great for his score, which is struggling close to the bottom.

FInally, finally they get to the last test.

"This test is simple." Jun says. "Kind of."

"Are you kidding me?" Crow wheezes. "We're not done yet?"

"Don't you ever get tired of whining?" Jun snaps. "Just listen up. This is the final challenge, and for some of you, your last chance at staying in this school."

Yusei, one of those aforementioned students, is staring at him with those stupidly big eyes. Kid's got an intense stare, if nothing else, but that doesn't make up for a lack of potential. And Jun can't judge potential until he sees it - Yusei still hasn't demonstrated his quirk, but if how he used it is anything like in the exam…

"This is our rock climbing wall," Jun says, jabbing a thumb to the tall, complex wall behind him. "The goal here — and yes, Hogan, it's the last test — is to get to the top as fast as you can. You'll notice that the rock climbing wall is multi-tiered, has some parts that move in between the structures. You can blast yourself to the moon if you think that'll help, but the timer doesn't stop until you hit the button at the top. You can get up anyway that's available to you — climb up the footholds, use the moving platforms, scale the wall, fly for all I care. Just get there and hit that button."

Crow Hogan, despite all the whining about being tired, practically hits his second wind for this one. Working with Black Feather, that weird, shadow creature thing living in his skin, Crow is able to fling himself up and grab ahold of the higher handholds, and keep repeating the process, weaving in between obstacles like it's nothing. Black Feather, looking a bit like a bird, bit like a man, shoots out from Crow's back, a bird-man stained black like a shadow, slams the button down for Crow. 2 minutes, 32 seconds.

Aki Izayoi, struggles a little with this one. She thankfully doesn't elect to try and topple the entire thing, and tries to do it similar to the way Crow does it. Lacking the finesse the broomstick boy has, though, means she has to coax her vines to pick her up carefully, and slither up the wall without breaking it so she can reach the footholds without much hassle. 3 minutes, 11 seconds.

Jack Atlas, the smug brat, actually does fly, in a sense. Jack's ability lets him channel explosive levels of fire through his hands, and if he controls it right, and angles himself, he's able to practically blast himself up multiple times to get to the top, touching down on the platforms only occasionally. 1 minute and 45 seconds.

And then, the last student is Yusei, who had been watching each one with an intensely thoughtful look on his face, running a hand through his hair. It's not — uncommon, to be nervous during the physical assessment test, but something about the way he stands, one arm curled around his abdomen and the other running his hand along the back of his head, it looks annoyingly familiar.

Before Yusei steps up to the beginning line, Jun snags him by the arm.

"If you pull a stunt like you did at the exam," Jun says. "Then don't even bother worrying about being in last place - you'll be expelled anyway. You don't know how to use your quirk, not without ending up useless - a quirk that can only save one person at the expense of yourself saves no one in the end."

And it must be some specific word that Jun uses, or the way he says it, because mild-mannered Yusei seethes at him, tensing up, lips thinning into a tight line. But they both know he's right, so while Yusei can glare all he wants, he says nothing as Jun lets him go so he can take the last stand and fail, because what else are his options? Screw up and end up a liability for others to have to take care of, or quietly scale the wall with his own bare hands? Either way, it ends in failure.

Yusei, though, still seems to be debating something in his head, clutching his right forearm fiercely enough that it's probably losing circulation. He looks up at the the top, a goal that's just too far out of his reach.

Jun scoffs and sets his timer.

And Yusei does nothing.

So that's his decision huh? Jun can't say he was expecting it, but it doesn't matter so much in the end, when failure is predetermined for you and —

In one fluid motion, Yusei raises his hand, and from the ground into the sky, shoots up a stunning blue and white spire of ice. Yusei rises with it, the ice forming beneath his feet and launching him into the air — it's nothing like in the exam, Yusei is trying to fling himself into the air with his quirk.

The angle is wrong though, he's just going to miss the three tier clearing and up end on the other side, on a lower tier, and at that rate it would have just been faster to have climbed — and then a platform, on it's timed rotation arrives just in the right place, right time, for Yusei to land on it, almost rolling off but landing on it all the same.

That's what he had been waiting for, Jun realizes, Yusei's few seconds of waiting hadn't been thinking about failure, they'd be calculating the timing of the platforms.

Yusei isn't done either — he's almost as high as he needs to be, but he's still have to climb the fourth and final tier, a comparatively short amount of distance, and that will cost him time, but Yusei flings his hand again — the ice shoots follows the movement, curving to the arc of his throw, blasting from his platform to the ledge he's meant to climb, freezing the gears of the moving platform, and it makes an makeshift bridge between the two.

It's not a very strong bridge, the ice starts cracking almost immediately as the platform trying to break itself free, but by the time it finally shatters, Yusei has already scrambled past and hit the button.

Jun looks down at his timer.

1 minute and 41 seconds.

"What?" Jack snarls, looking a cross between stunned and furious, but whatever he has to say is drowned out, because as Yusei climbs his way back down Crow drowns the fields in his cheers.

"YUSEIIII," Crow shouts. "WHAT THE HELL, THAT WAS AWESOME! We are going to have a Talk later, because now? Now you need to give me all of the details! YUSEI I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME."

"What's so special about it?" Aki says, arms crossed and looking away. "It's just an ice quirk."

An ice quirk that looked absolutely beautiful — shiny, glittering ice like it contained a thousand shards of light inside them, like they were made of stardust, but looking just as deadly as the cold vacuum beyond their atmosphere. A quirk that looks like it belonged in space.

Space.

...Wait.

"Yeah, I just got back from my trip to space," Judai says, eyes bright. He's running his hand through the back of his hair, laughing. "My quirk is out-of-this-world powerful now, Manjome! Wanna spar? It'll be great for my training to be the number one hero!"

"Teacher," Yusei says, approaching Jun and breaking him out of his thoughts. "Nothing in this world is useless."

And Yusei shows him his hand - the only parts of his body affected by his side effect. The cost of passing the exam was his entire body — the cost of this test was two fingers, the ones he used to channel his quirk, frostbitten but not completely useless.

"I'm not going to be a liability, not anymore," Yusei says, eyes bright. "I'm going to be a hero, just like —"

"Just like Neos, right?" Jun says, with a short laugh, and Yusei smiles.

* * *

Yusei's score is just enough to put him above last place, but Jun tells them it was all a lie anyway. Two lies make a right, right? They're fine believing it was just a ruse to weed out the weak and just push a more competitive atmosphere.

"That was mean, Manjome," Judai says, standing around the corner of the school building like a weirdo, peering over at the student's Jun just dismissed. "You lied about lying, which is okay? I guess? You have expelled students before based on this test of yours, which is, you know, extreme. But! But that must mean Yusei impressed you, right?"

"I knew it," Manjome grouses, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't know how such a calm kid has anything to do with you, but I had this annoying feeling kind of like a gnat buzzing around my ear every time I looked at him and saw him acting like you. What, playing favorites before even your first day as a teacher, Judai?"

"Ah-ha, ha, um," Judai has the grace to look embarrassed, but that, like his attention span, is short lived. "That's uh, something unrelated. But please, Manjome, tell me honestly — what do you think?"

"...He's got potential. I saw the footage. He's a good kid, smart, bit too self sacrificing, and that quirk is out of control. This is only the first day and I already had to send him to the nurse's office to get that frostbite treated," Jun sighs, eyeing Judai with a sidelong glance. "That ability of his looks, kind of like your Neo Spacian ability."

"Wooow," Judai says, eye twitching. "Does it? That's... so cool. I hadn't noticed."

That didn't sound weird at all.

"Judai," Jun says, grabbing his friend's shoulder. "I'm going to be honest. I have zero idea why you decided to sign up for a teaching position here, when you and academics have never even been on speaking terms, and I'm not even going to bother asking. Just, don't go getting yourself wrapped up in another weird adventure, alright? And don't go involving any of those kids in it, either. I speak for all our friends when I say we don't want to see you get messed up like that again."

"I know," Judai says, meeting Jun's gaze head on. "Thanks, Manjome."

And Jun leaves, because he's got classes to plan, papers to outline, and Asuka to hopefully convince her to join him for lunch, but Judai stays behind, looking out across the field, holding an arm across his abdomen, one hand running along the back of his head.

Whatever Judai and this Yusei kid have in common, Jun has a feeling it extends to more than just mannerisms. And there's no reason for Jun to feel concerned: he trusts Judai with his life and they've been friends longer than he'd care to admit, but when Jun thinks back to a day years ago, to Judai, bloody and eyes gold, beaten to an inch of losing that spark of life in him, there's this weird feeling in his gut.

Jun wonders if Yusei is boy with a haunted past, the kind that Judai would find himself drawn to, the kind of person Judai would attempt to fix the broken pieces of their past with the shards of his own future.


End file.
